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9.30 A.M.

‘Bloody hell,’ Stacey growled. She was still trying to make sense of the first damn clue. Her brain just wasn’t offering her any options. She could only pray the clues didn’t get harder or they were fucked.

It didn’t help that her brainstorming partner had left the office to go searching for information on any missing homeless people.

It was a community he’d explored during an earlier case, and Stacey wished him all the luck in trying to find someone amongst those lost souls. It wasn’t like there was a daily roll call where they all had to attend, raise their hand and shout ‘yep, still homeless’. Most likely a fruitless task but well worth exploring.

Unfortunately, that left her with only her own brain and no one, except Google, to bounce ideas off.

So far, she’d put every combination of the keywords she could think of into the search engine and got absolutely nowhere. On this occasion, Google was not being her best friend.

The frustration was building. Penn was better at puzzles, yet she had no background with the homeless community, so she couldn’t even switch places with him.

The only thing she had was Frost, who was finally doing what she should and staying quiet.

‘It’s human nature to spring your food well,’ she said aloud as though Frost wasn’t in the room. If Frost named her in an article as some kind of crazy lady that had one-sided conversations, she’d deal with it then.

For some reason, she felt that closing her eyes and saying the words out loud in a stream of consciousness might free her up from reading the words over and over again.

‘Human nature, human, animal, bird, amphibian, insect, person, nature, personal nature, season, spring, summer, autumn, winter, summer, personal nature, it’s personal nature to season, winter, freeze your food well, ice, Iceland, North Pole, South Pole, well, water, bucket.’

Stacey took a breath, allowing more words to swim into her brain.

‘Spring, season, salt, well…’

Stacey stopped speaking as the words fell into place.

She reached for the phone.

She finally knew where the boss had to go.